Inclination
by KristieConspiracy
Summary: Neville has followed Luna to the ends of insanity. What else is left?


**Challenges: D**obbyRocksSocks _Canon vs Fanon Competition _on HPFC  
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><strong>S<strong>ilverPotion205's _Prompt Challenge_ on HPFC  
><strong>L<strong>amia of the Dark's _One of Every Letter [Challenge]_

**Characters: **Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood

**Prompt: F**anon: Neville/Luna pairing  
><strong>T<strong>he Goblet of Fire #32: _Flesh, Blood and Bones: Write about someone dying too young. _Bonus prompt: _Greed__.  
><em>**P**icture of blurred city lights and traffic.  
><strong>#<strong>2 Myra Hindley: _Write about someone who commits acts of atrocity due to an overwhelming love or attraction to another person.  
><em>**A**ugustus #5: _I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable and I am in love with you.  
><em>**2**10: _Sickness  
><em>**T**raining round. Prompts: "You are not weak, just because your heart feels so heavy."**/** A candlestick.  
><strong>1<strong>3. _Though you hate to admit it, that's what you need. You just don't want to accept it, to feed your greed.  
><em>_**I**: Inclination_.

**Word count: **1,303

**A/N: Trigger warning** - substance abuse, murder, criminal activity, obsession, addiction.

* * *

><p><strong>Inclination: n.<strong> A person's natural tendency to act or feel [or behave] in a particular way.

* * *

><p>You don't plan on getting addicted to anything. It's one of those things that just happens when you overindulge, when you cede to temptation, when you give in. When the world falls to pieces and you fall with it. <em>That<em> is addiction. When you learn to cope with all your fears by swallowing another pill, ingesting another drop of wine, slicing another vein. All of it is an addiction. None of it is deliberate.

That's what Neville told himself, lying on his side and watching her sleep, the light from the flame atop the candlestick wavering as their breath stirred the air. Her dirty blond hair, once so lustrous and free, now hung limp and stiff, and he knew her rest was just a ruse, an illusion of how things might have been.

Maybe Harry had won the war, maybe they all had, but they'd lost so much more than their lives. Without the fear, they'd drifted apart, and that was how she lost control. She fell, and in her fall she was both beautiful and terrible. She slept, now, an illusion of peace in the darkness, but he knew it was too good to be true. She would awaken eventually - whether the next second, minute, hour or day, he couldn't be sure - and then she would start the inevitable waking decline that had him doing things he hated.

He chewed his lip, glancing at the window, where the city lights crept in. He almost didn't risk it, but in the end he couldn't resist it. He had to escape her scent, that sickly sweet odour of a woman addicted to a substance she shouldn't ever have gotten her hands on. _My fault_, he mused, staring at the road far below.

Down there, everything was the same, just as things in the muggle world always seemed to be. Rows and rows of twin lights, orange on one side of the road, red on the other, crawling along in New York City late-night traffic. The city that never sleeps. Well, he certainly hadn't slept since he arrived there, but he had committed horrid crimes.

Purchased her drug, her substance, the thing she needed now, to stop screaming, her addiction. It cost an arm and a leg, the American underground wizards market, but he couldn't go back to London, not after what he'd done in Knockturn Alley.

The reason he hadn't slept. Blood, running into sewers, coating his hands. A young witch, just out of Hogwarts, screaming for forgiveness. _My fault_. A curse, an Unforgivable, a spell he was afraid to cast because of its' very effects, because of madness induced by an enemy. Not his madness, never his, only ever used on him the once - he never let the Carrows' catch him, did he, clever, brave boy - only _him_, only the most dangerous wizard to cast it, only Lord Voldemort. A mercy, or so he thought at the time, a young messy-haired witch, dead on the pavement. A witch, dead too young. A crime that would have, could have, torn his soul in two.

A crime he justified, in his mind, as what she needed. He couldn't let her go without, not when he'd seen her tossing and turning at the nightmares and screaming in the day, unable to take things that weren't real. But he knew that nightshade was dangerous, as deadly as heroin or cocaine or cyanide. It was all his fault; she'd found the first leaves in his apartment. Stupid of him to leave them out: sloppy, careless. Of course she would consume them, because she was Luna Lovegood, too trusting, naive, distracted Luna Lovegood. Beautiful even now, in her malnourished state, he hadn't been watching Luna then.

She had popped the leaf in her moth, chewed it, swallowed it. The hallucinations began within the hour, and he only noticed a change because she laughed aloud.

She hadn't laughed for months.

Her pupils were dilated, her skin paler than usual, almost translucent. It was _his fault_. _His_ fault that she was an addict, _his_ fault she was falling apart - _his doing that had made her happy again_.

He was as much of an addict as she was, even if he didn't consume the substance. Though he hated to admit it, it was what he needed. He just didn't want to accept it, to feed his greed. He _needed_ to be the hero. He needed to save her. Nightshade had been the way to do that.

Nightshade had to go away.

He couldn't wean her from the stuff, though, no matter how hard he tried. He wasn't a healer, he didn't know how to treat people, not addicts, not like this. And he certainly didn't know anything about the medical care system of wizarding New York.

A whimper came from the bed, and he turned from the city and its' endless parade of lights, moving quickly to her side. "Hush, Luna, hush."

"I need it," she whispered, her voice hoarse, like a piece of paper scrunched into a ball. He winced, though he was used to the voice, and he sat beside her, rubbing her back.

"There'll be more," he promised her, though he didn't know why he did it. Surely it would be better to deny her, to force her to quit all at once?

"But I need it now."

"There is none, Luna. I'm sorry." He breathed so quietly and shallowly that air almost did not reach his lungs. Were it not for his breath stirring her wisps of pale hair, it would be as though he had died. Part of him wished he had.

She whimpered again, unable to form any other sound. Nightshade did that. It made an addict unreasonable.

His only explanation for what he did next was his own addiction.

"Luna," he said, suddenly speaking above a whisper. His tone was still quiet, measured, and it cracked. "I'm in love with you. I _am_. I've been denying myself this little truth for so long, but I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and there will come a day when all our labour has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow our earth and the world will cease to exist and I know you can barely understand me right now, and I am in love with you. I am so very in love with you that it hurts to look at you now, to see you broken and damaged and _hurt_. I know that you are hurting, and I know you're regretting and missing so much, and I know that I'm not enough and I won't ever be because I'm just Neville Longbottom, just me, just second-best, clumsy, careless Neville Longbottom with the insane parents and the disappointed grandmother and the single claim to fame, and I know that I can't fix you because I'm not smart and I never could fix things that were broken, but I love you. I love you so much, Luna Lovegood, and I wish it could be enough, even though I know it isn't."

The hotel was very quiet for a very long time. The sounds of the city: the cars below as they drifted through the horrid New York City traffic, of police sirens telling stories of the newest crimes, of animals roaring chaotically; all of it was lost in that moment, because it simply did not matter. Luna Lovegood had tilted her head up, and her silver eyes were fixed on those of Neville Longbottom. They were shining. Luna's eyes were shining, and they looked _alive_.

"Don't say that," she whispered, her voice just as broken as before. "Because it is. A heavy heart doesn't equal weakness."

"What?"

"Your love," she murmured, "is more than enough."


End file.
